Yet another Free Will Thread

[Humphreys]

I was arguing that it is entirely consistent to believe in determinism and the effectiveness of our reasoning process.

At the end of the day there is no way to refute Descartes' demon that is invisibly sitting on our shoulder and screwing with our minds. Even if Descartes' believed he could.

This is just another variation on it with physics as the demon.

That's true, but proving the existence of Free-Will would make such a scenario impossible.

Also, another difference here is, if determinism is true, we know for a FACT this physics demon exists, and in fact rather than just messing with us, it's completely dictating our every thought and action. We only hope it's not messing with us in a very bad way, and doing a good job controlling us.

Only free-will escapes us from this demon.

 

[Humphreys]

I'm not sure how truth figures into your concerns about control.

If you wree a brain in a vat being fed data from an outside source, your every thought out of your control, how likely are you to stumble upon the truth?

Your "truth" becomes whatever you're told, completely independant of what really "is".

 

[Jekyll]

Only free-will escapes us from this demon.

How does free will do that?

Descartes had to invoke god not letting demons be so mean to us, in order to dig his way out of the problem.

At the moment all we can say is that, a demon doesn't appear to be stopping us from thinking clearly, and that's all you can say even if you believe in free will.

It doesn't matter if the demon exists or not, the question should be, "What is it doing to us?"

 

[Humphreys]

How does free will do that?

Descartes had to invoke god not letting demons be so mean to us, in order to dig his way out of the problem.

At the moment all we can say is that, a demon doesn't appear to be stopping us from thinking clearly, and that's all you can say even if you believe in free will.

It doesn't matter if the demon exists or not, the question should be, "What is it doing to us?"

Okay, if there is free-will at least you aren't being FORCED to do anything, by definition. Even if our minds are being messed with, we have the final say if free-will exists.

Determinism means the demon is there, and has complete control over us. As I said, we only hope it controls us well.

 

[Jekyll]

Okay, if there is free-will at least you aren't being FORCED to do anything, by definition. Even if our minds are being messed with, we have the final say if free-will exists.

Well yes, but if the demon is controlling you then even though you have the final say, you won't necessarily know what you're talking about.

And you could still be manipulated and led round by the nose. I still don't see what you gain from free will.

 

[burnvictim77]

If you wree a brain in a vat being fed data from an outside source, your every thought out of your control, how likely are you to stumble upon the truth?

Your "truth" becomes whatever you're told, completely independant of what really "is".

Will doesn't control what I perceive. There seems to be a whole bundle of confusion in your argument here. Free will would still only apply after we are fed the information in the vat.

 

[Humphreys]

I still don't see what you gain from free will.

We know there's at least a CHANCE this demon doesn't exist

At the least it puts us in the saddle and we become responsible, rather than the Universe. I'd trust myself as a mind separate from the Universe, over something controlled completely by cause and effect, personally.

I guess it's debatable as to which is more likely to come to accurate conclusions regarding the "truth" about things.

 

[Humphreys]

Will doesn't control what I perceive.

A deterministic Universe does, though, and a deterministic Universe is responsible for our lack of free-will, right?

It's not the fact you don't have freedom of will that's important, it's what is in control, the Universe, or you.

In a deterministic Universe, the Universe controls EVERYTHING. Not just what you observe, but how you respond to that observation.

 

[Jekyll]

We know there's at least a CHANCE this demon doesn't exist

True, but on the plus side the physics demon isn't malicious, so if you have an idea and you try it and it works you're probably onto something.

Of course, this doesn't rule out other evil demons as well, or the brain in the vat argument. But the physics demon isn't so bad...

At the least it puts us in the saddle and we become responsible, rather than the Universe. I'd trust myself as a mind separate from the Universe, over something controlled completely by cause and effect, personally.

I've never understood how this would work. The idea of souls as separate from the universe works fine the context of religion and gives god something to damn to hell or raise up to heaven. But in terms of justifying free will, these mind soul things have to follow rules(we can't just think anything) as well and I don't see where the freedom would come from.

 

[burnvictim77]

...Double post... Sorry

 

[burnvictim77]

A deterministic Universe does, though, and a deterministic Universe is responsible for our lack of free-will, right?

It's not the fact you don't have freedom of will that's important, it's what is in control, the Universe, or you.

In a deterministic Universe, the Universe controls EVERYTHING. Not just what you observe, but how you respond to that observation.

See, now you are speaking in terms much closer to Fatalism, as though the Universe is some distinct entity with a will of its own, acting it out through various vessels including mankind. But this isn't the case at all with determinism.

Again, I ask you, what are you calling 'you' here? Because I am certainly in control of my actions, but what I am is not some magically distinct entity isolated from the rest of the universe, capable of becoming a prime mover whenever it feels like it. To say that I am not in control of myself is defining I (or myself, or both) in a way that I am not familiar with. I am an entity composed of processes, such as will and decision making, none of which need violate determinism and would in fact become worthless or nonsensical if they did.

 

[chriswl]

You could be hypnotized yeah, but that's not really the point as I see it. The problem is control over thoughts and reasoning processes, and the lack of it in a deteministic Universe.

If Free-Will truly existed, although seemingly impossible, I envisage being able to step away from the Universe completely and think completely independently of it, in a rational manner unspoiled by chance. Thought completely under my control, and independant of any other forces, especially the chaotic and often random forces of nature.

But your connection to the universe is your only guarantee of truth. We believe that the earth orbits the sun because, in orbiting the sun the earth generates experiences in us that force us to conclude that the earth orbits the sun. We don't want "freedom" to disregard this.

It's akin to a computer character programmed to believe in God, being able to step out of the program and look at the evidence freely and coming to his own conclusions, rather than whatever the programmer decided to pump into his mind.

Lets take the example of the DVLA (UK vehicle licensing) computer. It "knows" the names and addresses of car owners and the registration numbers of their cars. It has no choice but to know them, it is a deterministic system. Should we mistrust its data on account of its determinism? When the police feed an registration number and it gives them the owner's name, would it make sense for them to say - "well, the machine has no free will, it would have said than anyway, whether it was true or not, therefore it should be disregarded." Would the computer be more trustworthy if it could just freely invent data?

Surely the opposite is the case. Gaining knowledge isn't a magical, non-physical process. It can only happen through deterministic mechanisms by which physical records are generated by the action of the broader environment on the information processing system. These records are interpreted as being records of the events that caused them (or records of records to any level of indirection). If they had no causes they could represent nothing and would not qualify as information at all.

 

[mookid]

[FONT=Arial,Helvetica]"A man can surely do what he wills to do, but cannot determine what he wills."
- [/FONT]Schopenhauer

Reading some of these posts it is clear that some of the more critical of the 'deterministic stance' have not understood the important distinction in made in the sentence above.

It takes a strong man to behave positively, whilst at the same knowing there are no rewards as they cannot "take any credit". I believe it is this implication that drives many people away from the concept of determinism, as they do not trust that they can maintain any form of good conscience if they cannot be "held responsible" for their actions. They also worry that even if they do manage to maintain good conscience, they will lose the "right" they currently hold, in our presently "free willed" existence, with which they can condemn those who do not manage good conscience .

Not sure if that makes any sense. Does to me anyway!

 

[chriswl]

"A man can surely do what he wills to do, but cannot determine what he wills."
- Schopenhauer

Reading some of these posts it is clear that some of the more critical of the 'deterministic stance' have not understood the important distinction in made in the sentence above.

Yes, that is good. Just to expand on that, even if we could "determine what we will" it would be because it was our will to do so and we would then have to determine that will, ad infinitum. As Schopenhauer goes on to say:

Every thing-in-being must be something, must have a definite nature. It cannot exist and yet be nothing, it cannot be something like the ens metaphysicum, that is, a thing which simply is and no more than is, without any definitions and properties, and consequently, without a definite way of acting which flows from them. . . . But all this is just as true of man and his will as of all other beings in nature. . . . Freedom of the will, when carefully analyzed, means an existence without an essence, which means that something is and at the same time is nothing, which in turn means is not, and consequently is a self-contradiction.

Of course Schopenhauer wasn't aware of quantum indeterminacy but this doesn't really change his argument. It may be that not every molecule in our neurons acts in a deterministic way but it is clear that we mostly act predictably or it would be impossible ever to know another human. What about those possibly random acts, do they constitute free will? No, because there is nothing to tie such acts to my character, to my "essence". They are just random events that I am not responsible for, unlike my other acts which flow (deterministically) from my character.

The argument isn't really about free will versus determinism, although it has historically been posed that way. That way of looking at it may lead us to think that the falsity of determinism could open up the way some kind of absolute free will and in any case ignores the objection that determinism is compatible with a type of free will. The question is whether libertarian free will makes any sense at all regardless of what we think about determinism.

If we take Schopenhauer's use of the word "essence" to mean psychological essence or character, i.e the idea that what we are as people and as moral agents is the kind of character we are, the kind of dispositions we have to act in certain ways in certain circumstances, then the idea of libertarian free will is inherently contradictory.

The idea of libertarian free will that Schopenhauer describes is an example of what Sartre caled our "wish to be God" by which he meant our wish to be a being that is the source of its own existence. In "determining what we will" we stand behind our actions as a cause and then also stand behind ourselves as a cause of what we are and then stand behind that self as its cause...etc. If we wish to be totally free then we cannot have an essence. Sartre accepted this - he believed that we are completely free because psychologically we have no essence whatsoever, that consciousness is a nothingness. This is rather hard to reconcile with the fact that humans do actually have a fairly well-defined psychology and is in any case not what most free-willers want to hear. They see themselves as trying to ground our actions in some kind of essential self that while free is tangibly here before us ready to take the blame or praise, not some will-of-the-wisp existentialist nothingness.

 

[Mercutio]

It takes a strong man to behave positively, whilst at the same knowing there are no rewards as they cannot "take any credit". I believe it is this implication that drives many people away from the concept of determinism, as they do not trust that they can maintain any form of good conscience if they cannot be "held responsible" for their actions. They also worry that even if they do manage to maintain good conscience, they will lose the "right" they currently hold, in our presently "free willed" existence, with which they can condemn those who do not manage good conscience .

You have, more or less, summarized B. F. Skinner's "Beyond Freedom and Dignity" in a paragraph. He, of course, argued that credit and blame were artifacts of a prescientific world view...and on the strength of this book he was, the following year, elected "Humanist of the Year" by the [American?] Humanist Society.

One need not believe in free will to champion the cause of making the world a better place.

 

[mookid]

You have, more or less, summarized B. F. Skinner's "Beyond Freedom and Dignity" in a paragraph. He, of course, argued that credit and blame were artifacts of a prescientific world view...and on the strength of this book he was, the following year, elected "Humanist of the Year" by the [American?] Humanist Society.

One need not believe in free will to champion the cause of making the world a better place.

Nice to know there's people that agree with me

Honestly I have never heard of that man or that award before